There’s a video making the rounds on the internet that will haunt your dreams. On mute, it looks like a typical clip of breakfast sausages frying away. Turn the volume up, and ear-piercing screams of tortured pig souls call out from the great beyond. My breakfast links never seem to cook up quite so horrifically, but…

Go to your kitchen and lean in close to the fruit bowl. Put your ear to an apple and listen. Can you hear the tiny screams? Can you hear the last gasps escaping, the crying out to nearby fruit that the end is neigh? “Change brothers!” the apples seem to say. “Repent your acidic ways and turn toward the light of…

A fresh-baked loaf of bread is one of life’s great pleasures. The soft interior is open and airy, each bite yielding with just a touch of resistance. The exterior is all crust, a crisp and crackly delight contrasting in both texture and flavor. This balance is fleeting, though. Straight from the oven it’s at its best,…

America has a food diversity problem. Chicken, pork, and beef account for many of the animal proteins found on our dinner table—the product of decades of agricultural industrialization—and this has left us with cheaper but more limited options at the butcher’s counter. Once a year we all sit down to eat turkey, but…

Those fries you picked up last night on the way home from the bar hit the spot—golden, crispy outsides and fluffy, soft insides. But the leftovers heaped in a pile on your kitchen table this morning? Soggy, damp, sad, and destined for the trash bin.

Who would’ve thought something that came out of the faucet could be packaged so sexily? Grocery stores have whole aisles dedicated to the stuff. Advertisements whisk us away to tropical waterfalls and pristine frozen icescapes. Now, even ritzy restaurants offer to guide us through the options with help from dedicated “…

We think of onions as harmless root vegetables, but they’re actually clever bulbed bombs ready to defend themselves against all would-be consumers. They quietly lie waiting in farmer’s fields and grocery bins, but spring to action when a hungry critter bares its teeth or the chef’s blade comes down. The attack is a…

Right now, in the back of your freezer, there’s a bag of peas you opened two years ago or a couple chicken breasts hastily wrapped the last time there was a sale. Fuzzy with frost, stuck together, and zapped of flavor, those passed-over packages are dying the same slow freezer burn death of countless forgotten foods…

You may not have seen the commercial in years, but you’d recognize the setup instantly. Sweeping chords play and a day-dreaming, bespectacled housewife sighs as the screen does that fuzzy flashback fade. There are quick shots of vaguely fairy tale locales—an Italian palazzo, stately fountains, a rose garden straight…

If you’ve ever traveled abroad, you might have been shocked by the way other countries treat their eggs: left-out on counters and sold unrefrigerated at stores and markets. We Americans keep our eggs cold—and are taught to fear eggs that have come to room temperature—so why hasn’t the rest of the world died from a…

Have you ever turned over a slice of roast beef and caught that glimmer? A hint of rainbow iridescence that’s a little otherworldly for what’s an otherwise run-of-the-mill cold cut? Even when fresh, some sliced meats give off a metallic sheen that can give you pause. But what you’re seeing is the common optical…

At a young age, we learned the golden rule of America’s favorite convenience appliance: never put metal in the microwave. But why? What would happen? Will it really burn the whole house down like Mom says?

Before early humans began to domesticate plants for food, they foraged the wild for fruits, roots, and nuts. Through this process of discovery, it’s likely that one of our ancestors stumbled upon an almond tree and, despite finding the first few bites to be bitter, chowed down a handful of seeds. He then promptly died.

Bubbles are an essential element of the beer experience. The journey from bottling plant to your lips is a fascinating trek, one in which rough surfaces act like crags on a mountainside, bubbles congregate and grow like an advancing mob, and a foamy head makes its momentary appearance, only to disappear forever.…